Tuesday, 7 August 2012

A New Treasure

My treasure is my new favourite tool for quilting - the 'Add-a-Quarter Ruler'. This amazing little ruler makes it incredibly easy to cut even seams when paper piecing!

We were introduced to this little beauty by Carol Doak at the Quilting in the Highlands retreat that we went to recently. It was created by a colleague of hers to allow quilters to easily add a quarter inch seam to patterns, but Carol worked out how to use it for paper piecing. Combined with a straight edged postcard (a little trick Carol showed us) it certainly made our lives easier when piecing together our sections in the workshop.

Yes, I was very lucky. I have to say, before going to the retreat I had absolutely no idea who Carol was. The first inkling we had that she was really special was when we told the ladies at our local quilting store that we were going and they were very jealous. It was well worth attending.

Carol talked a bit about paper pieced mini quilts as well and said you could get add-an-eighth rulers that work really well for those. I'll have to keep my eyes open to see if I can get hold of one in Oz.